Trescothick backs Compton for England return

Nick Compton may have been dropped for England's Ashes warm up but his international career need not be over, according to Marcus Trescothick.

Compton was left out of the squad for the warm-up against Essex this weekend having made only 39 runs in four innings against New Zealand. The selectors expressed their confidence in Joe Root to open the batting in place of Compton.

But Trescothick, Compton's captain at Somerset and a former England opening batsman, suggested he would have stuck with Compton and endorsed him to "bounce back".

"I'm very disappointed for him," Trescothick said. "I'd have carried on and seen how it goes at the start of the series and then made a change if needed, but that's probably why I'm not a selector.

"I spoke to him on Monday just after he was told. It's very tough to take for him. I explained to him that I made my England debut through an injury and there's no reason why he can't get back into the team the same way.

"I know how much he has been wanting to play in a big series like this. You grow up wanting to play in big games and big series, so to suddenly lose that is a major blow. But there is still time to make it happen. He can change things. If he carries on scoring runs, he'll be the next in line.

"We play Australia this week and a big 150 would be ideal. It would be a bit too late for the first Test but it would be a big show of what he can do."

Trescothick is not impartial, of course. But as well as being a Somerset colleague of Compton, he is also a seasoned campaigner in domestic and international cricket who may well have a role in England selection in the not too distant future. And, as a team-mate, he is better placed than most to offer an assessment of Compton's suitability for Test cricket.

"He's very strong," Trescothick said. "So I think he will bounce back pretty quickly. He is a little bit misunderstood at times but once he gets his mind set on something he is very determined. He just has to do the only thing he has been doing: working hard, training hard and keep scoring runs."

Trescothick also urged the England selectors to stick with Jos Buttler, who he described as "an amazing talent, you have to stick with him" and then suggested that fast bowler Jamie Overton could break into the England set-up "within six months to two years".

Perhaps the only time that Trescothick, talking ahead of the Friends Life T20 season which begins with a day-night fixture between Hampshire and Surrey at the Ageas Bowl on Wednesday, was even slightly equivocal came when he was talking about the progress of Somerset's new director of cricket, Dave Nosworthy. Asked how the transition to a new director of cricket at the club was going, Trescothick admitted that results had been disappointing but expressed his confidence that fortunes would improve as Nosworthy's methods were given time to bed in.

Asked how things were going with Nosworthy, Trecothick said: "I don't know really. It seems okay but we're just not delivering on the pitch. Whether there's any correlation between him and our results is hard to work out. He's settled in well; he's worked well with the guys in trying to change things slightly behind the scenes and trying to be more disciplined and improve as cricketers. It'll just take time and then we can make that next step."